Web browsers have the ability to link into particular sections of a HTML document by using URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) ending in #<id-of-section>. For example, clicking on hyperlinked text from a rendered HTML document may display additional information related to the hyperlinked text on the same display, shifting down the content that was displayed after the hyperlinked text. While this feature is very useful, it is often difficult for the reader to find the end of the section they linked to. This problem also occurs for the top of the section when the section is near the bottom of the document and its height is less than the window height. Normally, the linked-to section would be displayed at the top of the window. However, if the linked-to section is at or very near the bottom of the document the linked-to section may be displayed anywhere in the window, where the user cannot immediately find it. All this makes finding the relevant section difficult.
Thus, what is desirable is a method for discerning, for example, highlighting a linked-to section from the original document. Known techniques such as “selectors” in Cascading Style Sheets (in CSS3) bind style properties to elements/sections of a document in order to solve the similar problem. Known techniques also require special tags to be inserted at various positions in a page, defining when to start the highlighting and when to stop highlighting, which can achieve a similar effect to the method of the present disclosure, but they involve much more complexity for Web page authors or subsequent editing of existing Web pages. For instance, while CSS3 allows new style properties such as highlighting of an identifiable section, it relies on special tags such as nested use of <div> and <span>. In addition, while a page designer may add special tags to be inserted at various positions in a page, defining when to start the highlighting and when to stop highlighting, those tags may be inconsistent with other aspects of their page design, and may not be supported by all browsers.